The 2009 Tour de France has officially begun and so shall the vegetarian culinary tour! To start the tour, we are going to get crunchy, zesty and fried with these Spinach Parmesan Croquettes. (I wouldn’t, however, recommend eating these prior to attempting your individual time trial.)

If you have some precooked rice on hand, this recipe takes no time at all to make. And, as a bonus, you get to get your hands all goopy forming the croquettes into little cylinders. I was able to form 14 croquettes using this recipe below. We almost ate all of them in one sitting.

Add oil to a pan and set to medium high heat. Add onions in oil until light golden and translucent. Add cooked rice, spinach, spices, and lemon juice. Stir to combine.

Add cheese.

Turn heat to low and add egg making sure that it doesn’t cook too quickly. Remove pan from heat and allow mixture to cool.

Once mixture is cool enough to handle with your hands. Crack two eggs in a small bowl and beat lightly with a fork. Add bread crumbs to another bowl. Form spinach mixture into small, cylindrical rolls.

Dip into egg mixture…

and then into breadcrumbs.

Place uncooked croquettes on a plate until all are breaded. (I placed mine on a sheet of parchment paper.)

Coat the bottom of a cast iron skillet with oil and turn heat to on medium high. Add croquettes into oil and fry until all sides become golden brown.

My local organic market (MOM’s) has a lot of vegetarian cheeses including parmesean and asiago. I’m not sure of what brand I got because I threw away the wrapper. I do know that it didn’t have animal based rennet in it. (However, it looks like you can buy a giant wheel of vegetarian asiago from these folks here: http://www.vellacheese.com/pages/products.html. I’ll split it with you.) ;)